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element-hq / element-meta

Shared/meta documentation and project artefacts for Element clients
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When presence is disabled for a server, show something other than 'Offline' #1241

Open turt2live opened 7 years ago

turt2live commented 7 years ago

This likely requires some backend code, but it does alleviate the increasingly common question of "Why am I offline?". Instead of showing people as offline, show them as 'Unknown' or something less concrete to indicate the uncertainty.

MTRNord commented 7 years ago

Maybe just not show it if it is disabled?

t3chguy commented 7 years ago

The issue is that the client doesn't know that its disabled, its a part of synapse disabled and it still functions over federation (incoming) so would not be quite as simple @MTRNord

turt2live commented 7 years ago

Related: vector-im/element-web#2667

lampholder commented 7 years ago

We keep seeing bugs/rageshakes/etc. about this - is there anything we could to so that the whole feature feels less broken for casual users?

turt2live commented 7 years ago

I can't see the rageshakes, but idling in the Riot rooms seems to suggest most of the reports revolve around people seeing themselves as offline (and then everyone else). A hopefully-quick improvement could be to always show the current user as online, regardless of the homeserver's suggestion.

For the second part, the homeserver exposing a flag for whether or not it is tracking presence would probably be needed for a proper solution, although you might be able to get away with just showing everyone else as online, effectively removing presence in Riot (probably not a good option).

DJCrashdummy commented 4 years ago

[...] the homeserver exposing a flag for whether or not it is tracking presence would probably be needed for a proper solution [...]

it seems to me to be the only proper solution. :+1:

hex-m commented 3 years ago

We already use .well-known/matrix/client to communicate things like e2ee-by-default, preferred Jitsi Meet instance, preferred identity server and preferred integration managers to the clients. This would seem like the logical place to tell clients that a server does not handle presence.

t3chguy commented 3 years ago

Yup. But would require an MSC given that atm presence isn't even an optional feature of the protocol. And would not help you know why your friend (on m.org from the pov of another server) always shows as offline given you can only query your own HS's w-k

aaronraimist commented 3 years ago

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1862 is the MSC (uses /_matrix/client/r0/capabilities instead of well-known but very similar idea)